View full sizePaolo Villaggio, left, and Roberto Benigni star in Federico Fellini's "The Voice of the Moon."Mediaset

A Fellini film playing on the weekend at the Cleveland Institute of Art Cinematheque sounds like business as usual. Except that in the case of the master director's final film, "The Voice of the Moon," the Cinematheque's John Ewing had to fly through a phalanx of shipping fees, rights wranglings and exhibition agreements. It took some time before he was allowed to show the film here: 23 years.

Saturday at 5:15 p.m., the Cinematheque will screen Federico Fellini's "The Voice of the Moon," starring Roberto Benigni and Paolo Villaggio. The comedy-drama about a former mental patient's lunar obsession, was released in Italy in 1990 and went on to win three Donatello Awards (the Italian Oscars).

PREVIEW

PREVIEW

"The Voice of the Moon"

What: Director Federico Fellini's final film from 1990, a comedy-drama starring Roberto Benigni and Paolo Villagio.

Ewing was interested in showing the film immediately, but had to wait out the international distribution plans.

At that point, Fellini was not considered commercially viable in the U.S. No less than Martin Scorsese tried to get the film released here, and at one point Miramax was interested, but the deal never happened. By 1993, Scorsese was helping Fellini find financing for a new film to be shot that fall, but the director became ill and passed away in October.

Ultimately, "The Voice of the Moon," was never released in North America, though it played in a few retrospectives after Fellini's death. Although Ewing has presented scads of the director's films over the years, the last one remained elusive.

"One of my projectionists, Les Vince, would hound me from time to time, saying 'Why don't we bring in "Voice of the Moon"?' I said, "I keep trying, but I'm not making any headway,' " said Ewing. "One obstacle is just to bring the print in from Italy and then ship it back is tremendously expensive. Even if we had gotten permission to show it, it would have been a tremendously expensive proposition."

The years floated by. It was not until this past spring that Ewing noticed that the BAMcinematek at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York had imported a print from Italy and was showing the film in May.

Ewing contacted the BAM and was told that the Istituto Luce-Cinecitta owned the English subtitled print of the film. So he reached out to the ILC. "They said, 'Yes, you can show the print in Cleveland, but you have to get permission from the rights-holder,' " said Ewing.

That led to negotiations with Mediaset, the Italian company that owns the rights to the film. The return shipping costs were estimated at $900.

"I sent out an email to other programmers across the country to see if anyone else would be interested in showing this very rare Fellini film," said Ewing. "I ended up getting five other takers. I thought If I could get come other partners, I could at least split the shipping costs."

Ewing said he could not discuss what he actually ended up paying because of a confidentiality clause in his Mediaset contract. He did say that the Cinematheque had to advance the entire fee and subsequently will bill the other venues.

The film will also play at The International House in Philadelphia, the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, the Athens Cine in Athens, Ga., the Northwest Film Forum in Seattle and Indiana University in Bloomington, In.

"I as forced to take on a whole tour of this film in order to make it affordable," he said. "We don't have a poster. We don't have a trailer. I was told it would all be at my expense to create that stuff as well. Believe me, if it were anyone lesser than Fellini, I would never go to this much trouble."

The Cinematheque will only show the film once. It is part of the Cleveland Cultural Gardens Film Fest, which will feature 10 acclaimed foreign films between now and Aug. 30.

When the lights go down Saturday evening, no one will be more anxious than Ewing. He has never seen "The Voice of the Moon." He hopes it's a good movie.

"It got mixed reviews when it came out," he said. "It was a hit in Italy."

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